"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already."
He has a point, you know. You implicitly trust every operating system vendor you are using with everything you do on your computer. Open source makes being evil only more difficult, not impossible.
But there is still a marked difference between trusting an executable that only resides on your system vs. one that phones home search results.
It's true, I can't conceivably pour over an entire source library even if it's open, but the fact that it is open means that possibility is open for many more eyes. This puts the executables built from those sources a notch above in trustworthiness. However the search behavior is the big sticking point here.
He has a point, you know. You implicitly trust every operating system vendor you are using with everything you do on your computer. Open source makes being evil only more difficult, not impossible.